FBI delays release of Ted Kennedy's FBI file

FBI delays release of Ted Kennedy’s FBI file
May 25, 2010 04:22 PM

By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff

WASHINGTON — The FBI says it is delaying the release of thousands of pages of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s FBI file for at least another week.

Alex Brown, an official in the bureau’s Record/Information Dissemination Section, says that the first installment of the voluminous file, which the bureau previously said would be made public this Friday, “is under further review.”

He said it is likely to be delayed at least another week, but declined to provide any other explanation for the decision.

The file on the long-serving Massachusetts senator is highly anticipated by historians who predict that it could contain new information about potential threats to his life in the wake of the assassination of his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy; the investigation into Kennedy’s involvement in the accidental drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne when he drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969; and a host of other previously unexplored details about what was otherwise an exhaustively chronicled political and private life.

The file has has already sparked some controversy even before its release: The Kennedy family has been given the rare opportunity to raise objections to the release of certain information on privacy grounds.

A spokeswoman for the Kennedy family says that Kenneth Feinberg, a former chief of staff to the late senator who managed the US fund to compensate the families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and is now the Treasury Department’s “pay czar,’ is representing the family in the matter.

There was no immediate comment from the family on the reason for the delay.